Friday, May 31, 2013

Listening to: Jaws (1975)

I love the theme from Jaws. It's one of the first John Williams scores to become instantly iconic and recognizable (is there anyone who *doesn't* know this music?) and foreshadowed the great career ahead of this amazing composer. His scores helped elevate films to greatness. In Jaws, just about everything went wrong. The shark was originally supposed to make multiple appearances in the film, but it kept malfunctioning. They had to go with the mere suggestion of the shark's presence, and that made the film so much better. All you need is a slight ripple in the water, or a POV shot underwater, combined with that music, and the imagination runs wild. Those two notes are like a heartbeat. Your pulse. Blood in the water. And the shark is coming. Not since those shrieking violins during the shower scene in Psycho has a relatively simple theme evoked such terror.